The present invention relates to retail stores, and more particularly self-service retail stores.
The conventional retail shoe store is typically divided into a storage zone and a customer service zone. When a customer desires to try shoes in such a store, he enters the service zone and requests particular sizes and styles of shoes from a salesman who retrieves the requested shoes from the storage zone and fits the shoes on the customer. Usually, the service zone includes customer seating, upon which customers sit, and a plurality of shoe benches upon which the salesmen sit when fitting shoes on the customers. In such a store, one salesman can usually service only a single customer at a given time, because of the time required of the salesman to retrieve shoes from the storage zone and to fit the shoes on the customer's feet. Consequently, multiple salespeople are required to serve multiple customers simultaneously. Further, if more customers than salespeople desire service, some customers must wait while the customers ahead of them are served sequentially by the available salespeople. Many of these customers become impatient and leave before being serviced, resulting in a lost potential sale.
Conventional retail shoe stores have at least two additional drawbacks. First, merchandise is difficult to control due to the fact that as customers are served at various locations throughout the service zone, the shoes which they have requested accumulate in the service zone so that merchandise is spread out over the entire service zone. Second, many customers who are in the service zone merely browsing are discouraged from browsing when approached by an, at that time, undesired salesperson.